Some snapshots from Life in Our New House

Toby, my constant companion in the garden, knows he's not supposed to be lying in the raspberry patch, so when he's caught, he first attempts to camouflage himself in the leaves,


and when that proves unsuccessful, resorts to looking tragically adorable.


Meimei keeps me company while I'm working at the kitchen table, and is clearly astounded by the quantity of plums I am about to pit for the dehydrator.


She considers whether they would be good to eat, or at least to bat around the floor.


Curious about what's outside her new digs, she peers out the dining room window, and we can see her from the kitchen.


New smells are as crucial to information-gathering as new sights.


This was the first of many plum harvests.


This was the first of many resulting plum tortes.


This is my reading nook.


This is how my reading nook looks when I feel like sharing it.


This is the view looking up from the reading nook, into the fig tree.


This is some produce brought over to Our New House from Jam Guy's old place, which were growing on his deck in EarthBoxes: The little ones are Sungold tomatoes, which are amazing and life-changing and my new favorite tomato; then there's some kind of plum tomato; some kind of orange tomato (I think they're called Jeune Flamme, or something romantic like that); lots of lemon cucumbers.


This is Toby and his friend Deacon the Puppy wrestling enthusiastically in the living room. You can't tell that this photo is not a random blob of fuzziness, but I promise, it is Toby and Deacon.


These are some gorgeous flowers my dad kindly sent over as a graduation present and a taste of home, which are very appreciated. They are in a pitcher made by Jam Guy.


These are the vintage suitcases we bought at two different yard sales last Sunday (for a grand total of, I think, $5.50) that we'll use for clothing storage.


This is the vintage birdseye-maple dresser that we picked up for a song on Craigslist, with some flowers from the garden in a Cinzano Baby bottle from a hotel-room minibar in Milan where I stayed one night with Giles, who that day pretended falsely to a stranger to speak neither English nor French nor Italian in order to prevent being evangelized, or solicited, or something.


This is the wheelbarrow, the weeds, and the soon-to-be-resuscitated vegetable garden area. We do have our work cut out for us, but it was a vegetable garden for 30 years, so the soil is beautiful and raring to go. Over to the left is some year-old swiss chard gone mad, probably from lonesomeness. We'll fix that.